The "Butterfly's Whisper" Blog

Welcome to my blog. I hope by sharing my own misophonia experiences, others who are frustrated with misophonia sensitivities will discover that they're not alone. I also hope that people who may not have misophonia will gain some insight about what it's like to have this condition. Please feel free to post any comments or use the "Contact Us" page if you have any questions/comments you don't want to post online.

Wow. I can't believe how long it's been since my last post. There has been a good reason (hopefully it'll be last time I use it for a while...)

Many of you have contacted me or posted follow-up blog comments about my experiences with the nightmare neighbor with the Bose system - asking me how the heck can I put up with those animals. Well, I haven't been complacent over these past couple of weeks. I've been working with my property managers to get out of my lease early with no penalty. (They're about as fed up with my neighbors as I am.) The end result is that this week I got the official "go ahead" to exit my lease early. (YAY!)

After this horrendous neighbor experience (which was the absolute worst situation I've had in over 32 years of living in apartments across the country), I decided to rent a house. One reason why I decided to go the house route is because Vegas is a 24-hour city with many people working shifts that are opposite of mine (E.g. Graveyard shifts). I didn't want to risk having shared walls/ceilings/floors again with a neighbor who's "day" was just starting as I'm trying to wind down for bed. A house may not be perfect when it comes to neighbors, but at least it won't have any shared architecture!

Everyone who knows me, and knew of my search, made sure that I keep an eye out for playsets in neighbors' backyards, dogs, and other indications that there might be noise around potential houses. I found one place that, for $50 less than what I'm currently paying a month, was twice as big. It wasn't quite perfect (nothing ever is) so even though I submitted an application for it, I still kept an eye out on Zillow and Craigslist for new items that may come up while I waited for approval. I came across one place that was only three doors down from another house that I was ga-ga over, but had been leased last month. It didn't have any photos of its interiors but something in my gut told me that the houses were probably very similar in this community and asked my realtor to check if it was still available. (It was!) So, I dropped everything to go see it.

The interiors were IDENTICAL to the one just a couple of doors down but what's even better, the house is at the end of the row of houses, so only two neighbors instead of three. It also has a HUGE backyard - giving more distance between me and the house to the back. It's in a guard-gated golf community, so very little traffic. I even went back yesterday in the early afternoon, figuring since it was nice out, if kids and animals play outside, it'd be the perfect time to hear what a typical weekend day would sound like. Yes, there were some kids playing in the park across the street but since the house is so new (2008), the windows are quite good and didn't hear anything while inside. I went to the realtor's office who was leasing the house and applied right on the spot. She said they were having a tough time finding the right person to lease the house (it's a gorgeous house, so they were being picky as to who rented it), and said that I was just who they were seeking. After a quick credit check (which she said was excellent), she accepted me on the spot. (Woo hoo!)

The short of it is that two weeks from now, I will be in my new house, far away from that nightmare neighbor! Luckily I saved most of my boxes from my move to Vegas (some of which haven't even been unpacked), so hopefully this move with go much more smoothly than five months ago.

As far as those nightmare neighbors, all I can say is I hope that Karma is a bitch! :-)

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About the Author

Emlyn Altman has been suffering with misophonia for over 30 years, even though she only found out about the actual medical condition much more recently. As frustrating as the condition has been over the years, her heightened sensitivities across all the senses considerably influenced her talents within the visual fine arts (particularly sculpture), music (singing, piano, and many other instruments), writing, and culinary backgrounds, as well as professional achievements as an architectural lighting designer. Her goal in developing this website is to promote more awareness about misophonia and help other sufferers as well.